ABOUT THE SERIES

In 2014 PMSA will be introducing its professional designations. This new chapter in PMSA's history creates the opportunity to further establish the organisation's relevance to the PM landscape in South Africa.

A manifestation of this relevance is PMSA's contribution to the local body of knowledge for project, programme and portfolio management, particularly at a level that will address the professional development needs of designation-holders.

With this in mind, we will be introducing 'The Knowledge Series', a series of events being held around the country in 2014, featuring selected experts presenting on trends relevant to our audience. Through the Knowledge Series, we will package these themes around three elements, namely: Research; Practice; and Methodology (RPM).

It is important to us that attendees are able to build up a library of relevant information during this series, comprising the presentation itself, information provided at the session, and review documents to serve as a welcome addition to the senior project managers toolbox.

ABOUT THE TALK

Information technology (IT) projects are still failing at an alarming rate and IT project management maturity levels are not increasing.  The implication is that IT project managers are managing projects the same way over and over without taking cognisance of previous and current projects.  Lessons learned should be taken into consideration during project execution as well as before the initiation of new projects.  An audit was done on 717 projects to determine which best practices are followed by IT project managers and which ones are not.  The results provide an indication of how IT project managers are managing their respective projects in relation to best practices.  The results highlighted some serious concerns especially with regard to planning and risk management.  It is evident from the results that IT project managers are not necessarily following best practices and that IT project success rates and maturity levels can be attributed to this lack of commitment.  It also implies that audit results are not necessary fed back into lessons learned and that the same mistakes are made over and over.  The results raise some fundamental questions about the capability and professionalism of IT project managers.

The 2014 PMSA Knowledge Series event ‘IT Project Management Success’ will be held at The Gordon Institute of Business Science, Illovo on the 4th April 2014 and will feature three 30 minute presentations supporting the overarching theme from the context of prevailing research; a relevant example of the trend in practice with lessons learned and recommendation of good practices; and those methodologies that promote success with the broad theme as a backdrop.

Professor Carl Marnewick, Ph.D

Prof Marnewick’s sound knowledge and practical experience in the implementation of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems and IT infrastructure project management as well as focus on the needs of the customer has enabled him to establish a solid track record of adding concrete value in organisations that are implementing ERP systems and are in the need of customer management.

Prof Carl Marnewick’s academic career started in 2007 when he joined the University of Johannesburg. He traded his professional career as a senior Information Technology (IT) project manager for that of an academic career. The career change provided him the opportunity to emerge himself in the question why IT/IS-related projects are not always successful and do not provide the intended benefits that were originally anticipated. Prof Marnewick has identified the gap between theory and practice as a global issue where valuable resources are wasted on projects and programmes that do not add value to the strategic objectives of the organisation.

Prof Marnewick’s research focuses on the overarching topic and special interest of the strategic alignment of projects to the vision of the organisations from project initiation to benefits realisation. The Vision-to-Project framework (V2P) developed by Prof Marnewick ensures that projects within an organisation are linked to the vision. Within this framework, a natural outflow of research is the realisation of benefits to the organisation through the implementation of IT/IS systems. Benefits realisation is part of a complex system and research to date has identified the following impediments in the realisation of benefits: (i) IT project success rates as well as IT project management maturity levels did not improve over the last decade and these results are in line with similar international research; (ii) IT project managers are not necessarily following best practices and industry standards; (iii) governance and auditing structures are not in place and (iv) IT project managers’ training and required skills are not aligned. If these four aspects are addressed through research and practice, then benefits realisation can occur.

Prof Marnewick’s research has given him national and international presence and he is currently a regular reviewer for national and international journals. He is actively involved in the development of new international project management standards ISO21500 and ISO21502 (portfolio management).  In 2012 Project Management SA awarded him the Excellence in Research Award as recognition for his active contribution to the local and global body of knowledge by conducting and publishing scientific research in portfolio, programme and project management.

Antonios Christodoulou, MBA

Tony (Antonios) Christodoulou is a senior executive and execution enablement specialist with broad experience, largely in the Financial Sector. Tony’s experience includes having managed many large complex cross-border programmes and projects in all aspects from Operations, Compliance, and Strategy to various aspects of I.T, process efficiencies and integration within Retail and Corporate Banking. Tony has also managed work-streams within the Barclays-Absa merger and acquisition, driven strategic alignment (from standardisation to decentralisation initiatives) and has worked and executed across 22 countries in Africa and the Middle East for Barclays Bank, Absa Bank and Standard Bank.

Tony previously as the Global Head of CTB Delivery for Standard Bank managed the team responsible for all Change-The-Bank activities within South Africa, The Rest of Africa business and Global Markets space. Tony was recently appointed as the Executive Head: CTB, I.T and process excellence for ATC South Africa. American Tower Corporation are a global provider of wireless communications infrastructure. ATC are the leading independent owner, operator and developer of wireless and broadcast communication real estate and offer solutions and services to deploy and support wireless networks in 13 countries across 5 continents.

Tony currently lectures at Gordon Institute of Business Science on their suite of programmes in the field of Project Management, Innovation and Knowledge Management including MBA, PDBA, PMD and executive courses for various companies. He has appeared as a guest speaker at numerous conferences/events that focus on execution strategy, Project/Programme Management, Innovation and Knowledge Management and the art of Effective Execution.

In his talk 'Why I.T projects are a different “breed” of change' Tony will present ideology, best practice principles and lessons learned that are essential to understanding the critical success factors and dynamics around I.T projects. Tony will take us through the process behind running I.T projects, why they differ to other projects and why it’s vital that these differentiators are considered throughout the lifecycle of a project and its overall outcome of successful delivery.

Lynette van Reenen, B.Com

Lynette van Reenen is currently an Executive at Standard Bank working on the Core Banking Transformation Programme. She has a degree in B.Comm.Informatics and is a Prince2 and MSP Practitioner.
 
Lynette started her career as a consultant working on projects at financial and government institutions. She then joined Standard Bank as a Process Engineer in 2005 and has since been involved in a number of programmes across the Bank.
 
In 2012 she was responsible for the implementation of a large Programme within the Core Banking Transformation initiative at Standard Bank. The specific Programme was a phenomenal success and was awarded the PMSA Project Excellence award for 2012. SAP also recognized the success by awarding 2 International Gold awards to the Programme for Excellence and Innovation.

She has presented both locally and internationally on the challenges surrounding the implementation of large technical projects. She is passionate about Project Management and enjoys sharing this passion with others.

IT projects are now so big and complex they can bring large companies down. This together with the high failure rates of IT projects require us to be far more disciplined and to better understand the key factors to focus on for successful delivery. Mature organisations are those that have been able to identify the need for and incorporate multiple methodologies to handle various aspects of the knowledge areas in project management, including most recently stakeholder management. Lynette will focus on the decisions and practices required to identify and entrench methodologies to achieve your project objectives and contribute to best practice, and reflect on the lessons learned along the way.

OPINION POLL

Attendees are invited to make their contribution to the event topic through an online opinion poll. The purpose of the opinion poll is to establish the event topic’s relevance for the audience and to inform open dialogue. The results of the opinion poll will be shared at the event as well as in a paper review. Regardless of attendance at the event anyone within the given environment is invited to participate in the poll to contribute to knowledge resources and stand the chance to win a prize draw.

Please click here to participate

TIME

07:30am - 08:15am - Registration and breakfast
08:15am - 08:30am - Welcome and introduction
08:30am - 09:00am - Research - Carl Marnewick
09:00am - 09:30am - Practice - Tony Christodoulou
09:30am - 10:00am - Methodology - Lynette van Reenen
10:00am - 10:30am - Q&A

CONTACT HOURS

Earn two contact hours for attending this event (Contact hours can be submitted towards professional development points)

COST

Members

R150 incl. VAT

Non-Members

R250 incl. VAT

Group bookings are offered at R2500 incl. VAT:

Table booking for 7
Branding opportunities

PLEASE NOTE: Payment is required at least 48 hours prior to the event

SPONSORSHIP

There is an opportunity for companies to associate themselves with the knowledge series by contributing in one of the following ways:
Nominating expert presenters
Sponsoring one or more sessions of the series in return for ongoing exposure through various channels

If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities please contact Dilshaan Duearte at events@projectmanagement.org.za

BANKING DETAILS

Nedbank Limited
Account name: PMISA
Branch: Nicolway
Account number: 1522079319
Reference: Invoice number

CANCELLATION POLICY

Please be aware that a 100% cancellation fee will be incurred for cancellations received less than 48 hours prior to the event

RSVP

Kindly note that RSVP is essential. To take advantage of the group booking offerings please register all 7 attendees details (or 'TBC' if this has not yet been confirmed). Please follow the prompt above to register.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Venue Sponsor